NRC Canada’s FTP site which logs the daily 10.7 centimeter (2800 megahertz) radio flux from the sun just reported what appears to be a new record low in the observed data.
64.2 at 1700 UTC
Source data is here
The Solar Radio Monitoring Program is operated jointly by the National Research Council and the Canadian Space Agency, the web page for their monitoring program is here.
The 10.7cm solar radio flux is an indicator of the sun’s activity. Here is a brief description of it from the National Geophysical Data Center:
The sun emits radio energy with a slowly varying intensity. This radio flux, which originates from atmospheric layers high in the sun’s chromosphere and low in its corona, changes gradually from day-to-day, in response to the number of spot groups on the disk. Radio intensity levels consist of emission from three sources: from the undisturbed solar surface, from developing active regions, and from short-lived enhancements above the daily level. Solar flux density at 2800 megaHertz has been recorded routinely by radio telescopes near Ottawa (February 14, 1947-May 31, 1991) and Penticton, British Columbia, since the first of June, 1991. Each day, levels are determined at local noon (1700 GMT at Ottawa and 2000 GMT at Penticton) and then corrected to within a few percent for factors such as antenna gain, atmospheric absorption, bursts in progress, and background sky temperature.
Part of this has to due with the earth’s orbit and position relative to the sun in July, this from Australia’s IPS Radio and Space Services:
On July 18 1996, the observed value of the 10 cm solar flux dropped to a low of 64.9. In many books it is stated that the 10 cm solar flux can not go below a value of 67. For example, the formulae given in the June 1996 edition of the IPS Solar Geophysical Summary show 67.0 as the minimum value. So how can we get a value of 64.9?
The answer is quite interesting – it depends on the orbit of the earth! The earth’s orbit is not perfectly circular but is slightly elliptical. In July of each year we are a little further than average from the sun and so solar radiation, including the 10 cm flux, is very slightly weaker than average.
So the 10cm flux will tend to be lower in July than, for example, December when the earth is closer to the sun than its average value. The combination of the extra distance to the sun and the solar minimum conditions have acted to produce this very low flux value.
It is easy to correct for the earth-sun distance and, when this is done, a value of 67.0 is obtained. This is the text book value!
Values of the 10 cm flux are often given in two forms – first as directly observed values and secondly as values corrected for the earth-sun distance variation.
The last time that the observed 10cm flux was at a lower value was on July 26, 1964 when it stood at 64.8. The lowest value ever recored was on July 02, 1954 with a value of 64.4.
As we’ve seen from visiual cues and lack of sunpots recently, it is obvious that the sun is in a deep minimum. Expert forecasts that have called for the sun to be regularly active by now have been falsified by nature, and the question of the day is: how long before the sun becomes active again?
(h/t Basil)
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Yes, we’re all waiting for Mr. G… to tell us the end is nigh.
Tom in Florida (18:12:29) :
“Another graph with the base period of 1979-2000. Will someone PLEEEEEASE
explain the facination with this time period? I understand 1979 as a starting point due to satellites but what happened after 2000? Did they fall out of orbit? Did NASA defund the project? Did the science teams all die? I do not understand why, at this point in time, the average is taken from 1979 – 2007.”
I think the reason for not changing the base year from which you calculate the average values is that you would get different anomalies every year since the average would change each time you do so. It also would be confusing if the anomalies for the past changes every year, you would also have to keep track of which base anomaly that is used when discussing it.
WWS: The conveyor belt idea is used in dynamo models that rely on motions ‘deep’ into the convection zone. Those motions are slow and the dynamo therefore operates on a 20-30 year time scale. A few years of slow motion are not going to be serious compared to the 20-30 year full circulation. I and my colleagues think the dynamo is ‘shallow’, operating on a 5-10 year scale and the conveyor belt speed is not relevant for this. So, what to say? In my case, the conveyor belt doesn’t matter. What matters is the strength of the polar field which is now the lowest ever observed, leading us to predict a small cycle.
Al Fin: About the NASA solar physicists in the tight corner: The prediction panel is split with more than half predicting a low cycle, so at least some of us are on the right track, it seems.
ss24 antartic ice yes falling to NORMAL levels, exactly same as this time last year
see it yourself from one of your own AGW sites.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
NOTE the pretty massive continuous high anomaly over the past 9 months which finally is ending (as one would expect). would not be surprised that high anomaly will continue as ice melts there though
Pedantry gone mad I know, but you wrote “in a deep minima”. That should be “in a deep minimum”. Minima is plural.
REPLY: Fixed thanks for pointing out the typo.
jerker anderson,
Thanks for your reply. BTW my last sentence should have read “why isn’t the average taken from 1979-2007”. I still do not understand what is so special about the period of 1979-2000. It seems to me that this is just a random period chosen as a base and therefore anything plus or minus from that base is really meaningless. If you continue to average the data right through the current year I’ll bet any anomoly gets smoothed and looks less dramatic over time. Or has algorean science determined the period 1979-2000 to be the alltime optimal period when everything is “correct” and we should therefore strive to return to those numbers in whatever we do?
@SS24
Thanks for the link. What are you maintaining? It is hot in Antarctica? Global warming goes on stronger than ever? Isn’t it that climate consist of a compilation of global temperature during a period of 30 years, not just the weather over weeks over one spot in Antarctica?
Did you notice that it is the first time for 30 years that temperature is going down significantly worldwide without there being a major vulcanic eruption? Did you notice that temperature does not follow IPCC projections? See <a href=”http://climatepatrol.net/2008/07/09/global-temperature-about-to-fall-below-ipcc-scenarios/”global-temperature-about-to-fall-below-ipcc-scenarios.
See
Yes, there was a low flux reading prior to SC19, but what of the other indicators? How long was SC18, was the sun spot number as low, for as long as it has been currently.
One of my problems with Leif is his insistnce on focusing on one factor, to the exclusion of all others.
Tom wrote: “Or has algorean science determined the period 1979-2000 to be the alltime optimal period when everything is “correct” and we should therefore strive to return to those numbers in whatever we do?”
That period was more limited, occurring only from 1993 – 2000. Heaven on Earth, don’t you remember?
Did you notice that it is the first time for 30 years that temperature is going down significantly worldwide without there being a major vulcanic eruption?
But the problem is that, I don’t see the temperatures falling significantly as you mentioned, I see the temperatures stabilized, even with La Nina and a prolonged solar minimum. Believing in any relationship with the solar cycles, temperatures should then have fallen more expressively. With La Nina ending and a start of cycle 24, I suspect that an expressive rising trend come again in the next years.
But as someone here has say, times are interesting. Yes they are. I believe in a correlation between Enso/pdo and solar cycles, correlation not visible because of oceanic dynamics and lag. So if we don’t get any strong El Nino before the maximum from solar cycle 24, that surely is interesting to me. If we get a strong one, I think that everybody here need to forget the solar relation and maybe need to accept an antopogenic cause.
Sorry for my bad english, I’m not an native english speaker.
————————-
Disclaimer: For me, skepticism is good in science and everything in society. I really appreciate the Anthony Watts work about surface stations, for me that is a good and valuable work. And Steve McIntyre, for me, he deserve an nobel prize for his amazing work, a science nobel, not a political one as the peace nobel that Gore received. I don’t like Hansen and their algorithms and I hate Mr.Gore as everybody here.
But sometimes Anthony and many others here fall a bit in denialism. The same errors and the pseudoscience and the same propaganda as the worst of warming alarmists. The same kind of news, it’s hot in Spain, global warming, it’s snowing in Baghdad, global cooling, blablabla, that kind of things.
I admit that my first comment was a little troll poorly educated . I apologize.
But what I mean is that here many of you talk about cold in China or anywhere else, and no one talk for example about the current heat wave in Argentina winter. That is the same biased information that warming alarmists always do too.
Climate Patrol (04:34:20) :
I don’t quite follow the graph you refer to.
According to the WG1 AR4 projections the global average temperature in 2000 matches the models (presumably because they have been run from that point in time).
This isn’t what your graph shows. Is this because the base point of the model is 1980 – 1999 or that you haven’t updated the model data to the AR4 numbers
This is a picture from the report with the A2 projection on the right
http://www.holtlane.plus.com/images/wg1ar4projection.jpg
Jeez, OT but as we seem to be veering between the sun, the Arctic and the Antarctic some relevance.
A few weeks back we had the news of a massive underwater volcanic explosion in 1999 on the Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic. Scientists had never come across this phenomenon before and believed it could’t happen.
At roughly the same time Hwang et al published a paper in GRL:-
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL034271.shtml
Today Nature publishes a small article on the Hwang paper in its research highlights section, entitled ‘Geoscience Carbon Sinks’:-
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v454/n7202/#rhighlts
The interesting thing is the last part of the Nature report which says
“This sets the Canada Basin apart from other ocean basins studied and means that models generally used to describe ocean carbon cycling do not apply in the Arctic.
Now that aspect was not mentioned in the GRL abstract, but together with the Gakkel Ridge discovery leads one to ask how many other things are there that are unknown in this supposedly ‘settled science’?
SS24, one anomoly doesn’t make a summer! Check out the June anomoly map from NASA GISS http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=6&sat=4&sst=0&type=anoms&mean_gen=06&year1=2008&year2=2008&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg.
Gives a different story
To add to the solar intrigue,there are a couple of Cycle 24 patterns on both hemispheres developing, not yet even tiny tims but worth watching
To add to the solar intrigue,there are a couple of Cycle 24 patterns on both hemispheres developing, not yet even tiny tims but worth watchinghttp://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_mag/512/
The low value of solar flux is obviously related to a lack of sunspot activity which, as proven by the Maunder Minimum, has an important influence on the climate of the Earth. Sunspots go hand-in-hand with Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) – waves of charged particles, some of which hit the Earth system and effect the climate as they spiral into the magnetic poles.
Actually sunspots are the result of millions of asteroids, which were ejected from an impact crater now manifested as Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, in the last 6000 years, into highly eccentric orbits around the Sun. (Sorry, Jupiter is a solid methane gas hydrate planet (mostly water), not a hydrogen gas balloon.) This is why sunspot cycles have a periodicity similar to the period of Jupiter. As their orbits decay they crash into the solar surface and splash out the material that comprises the CMEs. Corroboration of this hypothesis comes from the measurement of massive amounts of water within sunspots and from the downward velocity of the material in them measured at 3,000 mph. See: “The Origin of Sunspots” and other papers at http://firmament-chaos.com/recent_papers.html. Also see: acksblog.firmament-chaos.com.
The issue is not global warming…it’s easy to get distracted from the real problem…we’re abusing the Earth. And the question is…what are we going to do about it? As other cultures catch on to the democratic/capitalistic iconic ways that are near and dear to us consumption is bound to increase…as this happens, how will the Earth bear it? However, the Earth seems to have another agenda and seems to be able to lash out and take care of her self… Elohina, as the Cherokee’s used to call her, is alive and well, and if not respected, will force respect…
I recommend the book Ishmael…about an ape that educates a man… we THINK we’re the most enlighted, intelligent being on the planet. Well, left to care for it, we seem to have done a marvelous job with her, 😉 Could it be that all the other species have accepted their place, and know more than we? Dunno, is that a possibility in your minds?
Peace…
Experts say ‘end may be near’? Oh please, how stupid are some of the people who read this blog?
http://webescape.wordpress.com/
I have been to that observatory. If you are ever in the area, it is a very interesting place.
The fact that we are seeing the lowest recorded level is not what I am concerned about; it is just slightly below normal minimums. What concernes me is that the graph does not look to be bottoming out. looks to me like it has a nother couple of years before it reaches bottom, and turns around.
Re: Ackerman:
I have a real hard time believing that an asteroid can cause a sunspot. Heck, the thing would vaporize long before hitting the sun surface, and would be minuscule compared to the size of a sunspot.
@SS24 I appreciate your honesty. I just wasn’t quite sure on which side you are. You have a point there but then, Anthony Watts is a meteorologist, not a statistician. He is good at spotting errors where data is collected. That is in the realm of weather. Lot’s of weather makes a summer, etc. etc. So I talked to another meteorogist. The effect of the lingering solar minium has not really manifested in global temperature as much. There is a time lag. Interesting times, I agree.
@Oldjim
I see. I failed to give links. I got it from Wiki. But I think this one may be of better help: http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/figspm-5.htm . The base period both for temperature and emission scanarios started in 1990 (average of 1961-1990) and not 2000 (average of 1981-2000). 30 years is the standard definition of WMO for a base period for climate. Anything shorter term is still weather if I am not mistaken. The reference period ends in 2071-2100. So what I did is to shift the average temperature from 1961-1990 until June 2008. That’s a period of 210 months so far with an average trend of just +0,1°C per decade. But in order to reach the target by 2100, another +0,3°C per decade is needed. Why should we trust this kind of woodoo scinece, no matter what the sun will do in the coming decades?? Sorry, this was now a little denialist jargon:-)
[…] There is some conjecture that this will lead to a cooling trend on Earth. The latest news is that the solar flux is at a near record low. I have no idea what that means, but I liked this observation: Expert forecasts that have called […]
There is a notable probability that cold fronts will start to come further and further to the south, starting next week, in the upper 30N latitudes of the NOAM Pacific coast.
This summer has been strange, a real mix of traditional summer and early fall weather. Normally we would oscillate between a strong northwesterly zonal flow, and more stagnant periods. But this summer, instead of the stagnant interludes, we’ve mainly has strong meridional flows, which is classic fall weather. This is not to say there have been zero stagnant interludes, but is to say they have been much rarer than normal.
By the end of the month, climatic fall may have begun.
The same thing happened last year.